This one was really disturbing in the "I want to turn it off but it's so horrifying that I physically can't move to do so" way. Still feeling a bit queasy .....

I think the only thing that bugged me is that there was really no reason to root for the family. I wonder how the story would differ if they had started out really caring for and desiring to maintain their house, like a regular family might when buying their first home, but then the increasingly desperate circumstances caused by the war led them to treat it inhumanely. The conflict between civilization, shown through home-ownership, versus barbarism as a means of survival might have been interesting. As it stood, the whole family was cruel to the house from the very beginning, so it was fairly predictable that they would only up the ante as the war situation deteriorated. I was cheering for the poor house the whole time! Still, this story was really... invigorating?... to listen to, if not exactly pleasant. Well done!

Yep--so disturbing that I had to turn the story off and finish reading it in text. Bryn Shurman did too excellent a job!

I felt that the disturbing intersection of the two primary threads of modern masculinity (namely violence/control versus protection/tenderness) was especially well done, even if I found it too visceral to listen to. I think this one is going to stay with me for a while.

Yikes! This one was old-school grim and cruel. How about a Warning Norm? Bryn?

shammon5 wrote:I think the only thing that bugged me is that there was really no reason to root for the family. I wonder how the story would differ if they had started out really caring for and desiring to maintain their house, like a regular family might when buying their first home...

Ain't that the truth. I wonder how deliberate that was? This story read like the current, revisionist, "histories" about the White Devil raping the world and abusing the natives -- they somehow have almost no positive qualities or justifications. All we are missing is Kevin Costner going feral and, perhaps, frolicking with a frisky tool shed.

beethermos wrote:... I had to turn the story off and finish reading it in text.

Oops! That's a technical foul in podcast land. No reading needed is part of the point.

I haven't been listening long, but I have loved everything I've heard up until now. I have no particular right to criticize, and I realize that my opinion is meaningless, but nonetheless I found this episode to be a bit too, (I struggle for the right word), visceral? No. Generally depressing? That's closer. Nihilistic? Normally I appreciate nihilism, so that might not be quite the right term, either.

Essentially we know that all of the characters in this story will die, badly. And the one who deserves it the least suffers the most.

I'm left looking for something to flush it from my memory, like a cold drink washes out the taste of a burnt casserole.

They all gettin' soft on you. Seriouslike. I thought this episode was great; disturbing but awesome, and I don't believe the Drabblecast should shy away from material like this. Here's why.

The Holy Trinity of my podcast list is Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. And while Pseudopod puts out great horror, there's one thing that the Drabblecast can do that Pseudopod never do, and that's surprise people with a horror story. Because whatever happens on Pseudopod story, chances are excellent something is going to end badly for someone. But with the Drabblecast, you never know what's coming, and you can never make that assumption.

This story really could have gone anywhere at the beginning. Many Drabblecast episodes take a surreal humorous twist, and there was the potential for that here. There was also a potential for an ultra-dark satire or some kind of parody of sci-fi tropes for this story. But nope, it bypassed those exits on the literary highway, rolled the windows up, locked the doors and drove straight to hell, with the audience kicking and screaming in the backseat.

One of the great things about the Drabblecast is that the audience is never sure what kind of speculative fiction they're in for. Sometimes it's like Willy Wonka rowing scared children down a river made of chocolate. But occasionally it's like waking up in a darkened room to a video message explaining that you need to use the pocket knife on the table to cut someone's stomach open to get the key that will stop a bear trap from exploding your jaw.

And God bless exploding reverse bear jawtraps, because if we didn't get a few of these on the Drabblecast once in awhile, then the Drabblecast misses out on that potential for shocking people in that way. And that's detrimental to the whole show because, and I'll say it again, what's great about the Drabblecast is at the beginning of the story, the audience never quite knows how deep that rabbit hole goes, or where it leads.

Horrible story! But I'm glad I listened to it. Please keep them coming Drabble Cast. While the story was terribly sad and just a afful situation the people were all very believable. The sound affects just helped to draw me into this wacked world. Great production. Thank you Drabble cast for another intense story

I loved this one in part because it was gruesome and crazy but also because it how in certain societies everyone can just "get used to" certain bizarre and cruel rituals. We all cringed at the bat hitting the nutsack but what things in our own world are pretty crazy and we just accept them as that's the way things are?

I'd be interested to know what others think future generations will look back on about these times and say how the hell could those people have done that and not even flinched?

Well, if they look back at the genocide in the Mideast and wonder, as we wonder, how no one rescued the Jews from the Holocaust either, that will mean things turned out okay. If they look back and celebrate the 50th anniversary of MTV. that's probably a bad sign.

Never judge anyone until you have biopsied their brain.

"Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."
Known Some Call Is Air Am